Just leave it the way it was, why insist on changing it to a skill mod? Let it mod the hitpoints as a science console.

That would be too simple. Gotta mess with the formula so they can nerf it down like all the other consoles. Anyone remember when the power consoles gave +7 power or the beam and cannon consoles did just as much as the specific energy type tac consoles?

I never understood why there was one "Must have" console to use in the game. No other console gives as much as the field generator. IF shield strength is so low at Vice Admiral why not just modify the shields themselves to give a 35% increase in capacity?

A player goes through the entire game without the console until Vice Admiral why is it even really needed? I realize that manipulating all the shields can be a pain, versus 1 item, but the console effectively removes 1 slot for every VA ship.

If we have to have this overpowered shield booster, why not simply make it a special slot in the VA ship? I know the Cryptic team has the talent. In the future if the team decided to make more unique "must have" items then the ground work would be done.

For example:

Add a slot called "Warp Core" then rename the Current Field Generator to "Shield Modulation Warp Core System Mk XI"

Then say a few months down the line another bunch of set items come out, the team could use that basis for more interesting items with pros and cons.

M.A.C.O. Warp Reactor Mk XI anyone?

Anyway prudent to slap a band aid until the math is fixed, but there is an opportunity to grow the ship systems in a "more trek way".

Oh and before I forget, I just wanted to say thank you for all the hard work that you, Gozer, Heretic, and the rest have done on the two year anniversary. It is highly appreciated by me, and many others I'm sure.

This is a temporary fix and the console will eventually go back to using Starship Shield System skill points.

Two things:

1) Since the goal that was specifically stated was to NOT change the end value of the console, WHY is this a temporary fix considering it achieves the goal. Consistency? There isn't a lot of consistency in Engineering consoles and I don't see anyone complaining about that. Beyond that, the "consistency" of Science consoles is one of the main complaints (read: reasons they suck). We WANT them to do more than just buff science skills, which apparently is the goal of changing this again. This is the problem with Science consoles. This is why we don't like them. If someone bothered to actually read the feedback this should have been readily apparent, and doing this is the exact opposite of what pretty much all the feedback indicated.

If it's working as intended and giving the proper bonus (which from what we're told, is what reverting it should lead to).... LEAVE IT ALONE. Stop trying to fix what works and work on what doesn't. This is becoming an incredibly bad habit of the STO team. You keep making needless changes to stuff that works and then breaking it as opposed to fixing what doesn't work. Stop that. Seriously. Stop it.

2) These are STILL going to be Science Consoles? So that means that everyone who had them Overflowed (read: everyone) won't be able to reinsert them into the Engineering slots which we were specifically told they would not be moved from. How is THAT going to be fixed? And if you CAN'T fix it, should I be expecting a lump sum of Dilithium equivalent to my Blue Mk.XI Engineering and Science consoles? Because the last Science console rework already caused me to have to trash pretty much every Sci console I had, since they were made utterly worthless to all of the characters who owned them. This will essentially be the second time in about a month that I will have to replace my consoles with DIlithium out of my pocket?

Am I actually supposed to want to put time and effort into this game playing it when the developers keep doing stuff that screws over my characters and makes the time I spend a total waste?

You want to fix something? Leave the Field Generator giving a percent bonus like it's supposed to and has always worked, and instead fix the double blunder of borking our consoles twice by giving us a refund on DIlithium spent, or a method to exchange Rare Mk.XI consoles on a 1-for-1 basis so our time getting all these nifty new paperweights wasn't entirely wasted.

That would be too simple. Gotta mess with the formula so they can nerf it down like all the other consoles. Anyone remember when the power consoles gave +7 power or the beam and cannon consoles did just as much as the specific energy type tac consoles?

Everything must be nerfed in order for them to raise the level cap.

The specific energy type consoles should be better than the generics. You gain by being selective, or get a lesser bonus that lets you mix and match, but the optional use of multiple energy types/effects. The numeric changes don't bug me because as I understand it, the math ended up the same. This change was very different and I'm thinking it will take a while to figure out how to get the complete change to give the same result the old method did. I don't think it can.

The unintended nerf went too far, but the original value was too large and made the console a must-have item for everyone. Instead of reverting the console to it's old value, you should put it to somewhere in-between if you want to make the game more balanced. The way the console used to work you had no choice but to slot it if you wanted to be effective. If that's the case, you may as well just boost everyone's shields by 35% and remove a console slot to accomplish the same goal.

That being said, if you return the console's to exactly their old value, for the love of God make sure that they no longer stack.

The force-able removal of the console from it's engineering slot was also quite the rude surprise to a lot of people, especially science vessel captains who would prefer to keep it there. The worst thing that can happen now is a stealth fix to the console removal bug, so that people who log in after a later patch can keep the console in an engineering slot. This would effectively make some science vessels gimped, and give others a permanent advantage. [b]Please don't do that Cryptic.[b]

The console should have never been moved, but now that it has it is not going to be moved back. I also can't see Cryptic going around and offering to put the +35 console back into it's engineering slot for everyone that wanted theirs to be grandfathered as was promised. Best solution I can think of is to just make it so you can equip the console in either an engineering or a science slot. This would effectively let Cryptic keep the promise they screwed up, make science consoles more valuable like the original intent, and not create two tiers between people who were able to keep their console in an engineering slot and those who couldn't. Win/win/win, and a simple change.

Credit were credit is due though, good work buffing the other science consoles back to parity with the bonuses other consoles give you. This was probably the only change that was ever necessary.

In terms of under-powered consoles though, what happened to power boost consoles? +7 power was never really overpowered, and +3.5 is more or less not worth wasting a slot on. These really need to be restored to the original value, and aren't even worth looking at if they don't give at least +5.

Also, good work on returning the Maco shields to the point where they are not completely unbalanced. Unfortunately, the same can be said for the KHG shields. Like the Maco's, they also have an extra cap modifier that should be removed. They also have a very nice proc, but the probability is far too high. 25% is going to proc almost immediately given the amount of hits each ship can dish out a second. Somewhere between 5-10% would quite a bit better.

I hope Cryptic has learned some much needed lessons in terms of QA between this and the maco shield disasters. It also seems that the devs knew about the problem with grandfathering the consoles before the patch went live, but couldn't stop it because the patch was attached to the 2 year anniversary event. There's another lesson: In the future, don't couple systems or balance changes with content changes that have a tight schedule. Keep them separate so you aren't forced to put stuff you know is broken onto live.

1) Since the goal that was specifically stated was to NOT change the end value of the console, WHY is this a temporary fix considering it achieves the goal. Consistency? There isn't a lot of consistency in Engineering consoles and I don't see anyone complaining about that. Beyond that, the "consistency" of Science consoles is one of the main complaints (read: reasons they suck). We WANT them to do more than just buff science skills, which apparently is the goal of changing this again. This is the problem with Science consoles. This is why we don't like them. If someone bothered to actually read the feedback this should have been readily apparent, and doing this is the exact opposite of what pretty much all the feedback indicated.

If it's working as intended and giving the proper bonus (which from what we're told, is what reverting it should lead to).... LEAVE IT ALONE. Stop trying to fix what works and work on what doesn't. This is becoming an incredibly bad habit of the STO team. You keep making needless changes to stuff that works and then breaking it as opposed to fixing what doesn't work. Stop that. Seriously. Stop it.

2) These are STILL going to be Science Consoles? So that means that everyone who had them Overflowed (read: everyone) won't be able to reinsert them into the Engineering slots which we were specifically told they would not be moved from. How is THAT going to be fixed? And if you CAN'T fix it, should I be expecting a lump sum of Dilithium equivalent to my Blue Mk.XI Engineering and Science consoles? Because the last Science console rework already caused me to have to trash pretty much every Sci console I had, since they were made utterly worthless to all of the characters who owned them. This will essentially be the second time in about a month that I will have to replace my consoles with DIlithium out of my pocket?

Am I actually supposed to want to put time and effort into this game playing it when the developers keep doing stuff that screws over my characters and makes the time I spend a total waste?

You want to fix something? Leave the Field Generator giving a percent bonus like it's supposed to and has always worked, and instead fix the double blunder of borking our consoles twice by giving us a refund on DIlithium spent, or a method to exchange Rare Mk.XI consoles on a 1-for-1 basis so our time getting all these nifty new paperweights wasn't entirely wasted.

...

...

... ... *sigh* who am I kidding, this is going to be ignored too.

This.

I would also like to suggest making the console a science and an engineering console so you can slot it in either type of console slot. This is the only reasonable way I can think of to amicably resolve this blunder.

I would also like to suggest making the console a science and an engineering console so you can slot it in either type of console slot. This is the only reasonable way I can think of to amicably resolve this blunder.

Why stop at Science and Engineering? We know they have the tech to make universal consoles. They're trying to sell us enough of them to make that readily apparent. They should just do that. Make the Field Generator console a Universal since it functions more on a par with the other universal consoles than it does with the standard ones.

Simple fix for all the people who had theirs overflowed, and all the people who want to have it as a Science console too. It also means they don't have to worry about how that console stacks against other options, since it would be a universal one and they've never been particularly balanced anyway.

A fix that actually solves problems.

Then, perhaps, it would be time to find a way to deal with what is actually wrong with Science consoles as opposed to what was recently done to them which ultimately ignores the actual problem which was clearly expressed in pages and pages of feedback.